Yet more health care plans you may like but won’t be able to keep

posted at 5:31 pm on June 21, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

Fixing Obamacare, as opposed to repealing it, is all the rage these days, and there are no shortage of proposals out there to do so. But they don’t all come from the GOP. One measure from Health and Human Services currently making its way through the bureaucratic machine may wind up having Democrats doing battle with the Health Insurance Guru in Chief. In this proposed enhancement, insurance companies would be prohibited from selling fixed-benefit insurance plans as stand-alone policies.

A little-known proposed change to the president’s health care law could result in a new political nightmare for Democrats who are vulnerable in the 2014 midterm elections.

Vox.com says the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a proposal in March that would prohibit insurers from selling fixed-benefit insurance plans as stand-alone policies.

Fixed-benefit plans are so bare bones they don’t even qualify as actual health insurance under the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate – so people who are covered by these plans only are still subject to the penalty unless they qualify for an exemption.

These sorts of plans, with low prices but fixed, limited benefits, are described as being most likely to be held by people looking for a supplement to an existing, lower coverage policy or those seeking a bridge remedy when they are between jobs. Not a panacea for most health insurance shoppers to be sure, but a useful tool to have available if you’re looking for some flexibility when money is tight.

Keeping such plans as an option isn’t just desirable to the little guy trying to figure out a solution. It’s also supported by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, which has plenty of Democrat-appointed members. If this goes through – which looks fairly likely – and the fur begins to fly, it won’t just be Republicans calling the President out on the carpet during some election season frenzy. He’s going to be taking fire from members of his own party who are already facing enough challenges in holding on to their jobs.

This may be horrible for the American people, but hey… it’s Barack Obama’s signature achievement of his presidency. (Aside from ending the war in Iraq, that is.) More to follow.

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I think its juss wonderful that Obama is tecking keer ob us by preventing Those Ebil Insurance Companies from offering us policies that don’t cover a husband’s mammograms or free birth control for the kiddies.

Otherwise, we might not get such great health care for nuthin’, amiright? Only cuz Obama?

Those Republicans want us to go back to the days when wymynz had to sell apples on street corners to pay for back-alley mammograms an’ condoms an’ stuff.

And take away our PHONES. Republicans don’t want a brothah to hab a PHONE, even.

Once again, this is the fault of turncoat reach-across-the-aisle to give a reach-around Republicans. John “you have nothing to fear” McCain, Olympia “when history calls” Snowe, Mitt “sharknado in the primary, milquetoast in the general” Romney, and John “it’s a tax” Roberts….I’m looking at you @#$%& turncoats.

If the dogs do not like Obama’s dog food, he will just take away all other food so the dogs can only choose between Obama’s brand or starvation. Many will choose starvation (i.e. they will go naked without coverage and either duck the penalties by claiming hardship or pay the fine.) In view of the high deductibles for Obamacare, either way one really has to trust to God for good health because the cost of Obamacare is beyond what the middle class can afford.

We must be living in two different worlds when articles like the one below can still be published with a straight face. Can people really be so divorced from reality?

Can we finally agree that Obamacare is working?

the end of a war, some people will remain holed up in the trees, thinking they can still turn the tide of a lost cause. Increasingly, that’s the best description of the anti-Obamacare dead-enders, including Congressional Republicans, who continue to depict the Affordable Care Act as a failure despite facts like these …

______________________________
Obamacare is SUSPENDED in the TwilightZone
______________________________

Team Obama is AFRAID to FULLY IMPLEMENT
the Obamacare law.
……………………………………………………………………
Like a ZOMBIE — Obamacare is NOT fully alive
— it’s legal and financial foundation siting on a quicksand.

______________________________

Paul Ryan said he still believes that
Obamacare will collapse under its own weight

and said he and other Republicans
are working on an alternative.

……………………………………………………………

Obama says he’s open to fixing the law’s problems
but has proposed no real changes.
He has acted unilaterally to postpone deadlines
for implementation of specific provisions
— to minimize political damages.